


Brimstone

by truckstophooker



Series: Rancid [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Biological Warfare, implied dystopia, indirect cannibalism, semi-comedy honestly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-20
Updated: 2015-04-20
Packaged: 2018-03-24 22:16:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,954
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3786286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/truckstophooker/pseuds/truckstophooker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A crooked man wants to put an end to his equally crooked ex-friend's regime, and he'll kill anyone to do it. His first mate isn't too keen on the idea and honestly just wants the gang back together. Together, they blow up Chicago.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Brimstone

_“Burn him.”_

_Those were his instructions. Find the bitch, and burn him._

-

The city was big. It was big when he was little, it was still big even though he wasn’t so little anymore, and he still knows it like the back of his hand. The greatest city in the world, you could never convince him otherwise; it felt like a sigh after a deep, quenching breath-  _Chicago._

Practically the entire city was in ruins. The U.S. was in ruins, the whole world was in ruins, though he doesn’t give a shit about that last part, because he doesn’t live in the rest of the world, and he’s always sucked at seeing the big picture.

 -

_“Burn him? Like, Indian ‘ow my arm sure smarts’ burn him, or fire and brimstone ‘watch him melt’ burn him?”_

_“Like ‘douse the bitch in gasoline and light the fucking match’ burn him. Do it on Jackson so I can hear him scream.”_

_-_

When he steps out onto South Wacker, his feet feel like a bass line. He’s romanticizing it, but it feels fucking good, and there are a few mollies that are hooked onto his utility belt that clink and chime when his hips move around with each step. It only helps him feel that much more powerful, which is a dangerous thing for him- of all people- to feel.

The streets are quiet except for his war song.

 -

_“I gotta walk up and down like a hundred flights of stairs all goddamn day… Out of all the buildings you could’ve chosen, you pick the tallest one?”  
_

_“It’s the only one with enough room.”_

_-_

If you call it the Willis Tower, he’ll pull out one of his guns. He’s a Chicagoan more than anyone else you’ve ever met, and if you insult his city, he’ll blow yours up. Every day he wakes up and gives thanks that this place is one of the only places left standing, even if only the heart is really left- he lives on what’s now considered the outskirts. Makes him sick, honestly, to think that the Sears Tower is now city limits, because practically none of the city is left.

That infestation broke out and wiped out a huge chunk of the population, everywhere, and the entire world went off the deep end. He was never one to think that he’d ever see a bomb go off, but now he couldn’t count the number of times on all his fingers and toes.

When he watched the Steel Mills blow, nobody could go outside for months.

 -

_“Word on the street is that a hospital up on the north end got some generators back online and some insurgents are making it base camp. Didn’t say what kind of insurgents.”_

_“Find out. And if it’s not good news, bring back the leader and make the rest dead news.”_

 -

A couple years ago (or maybe it was just a year or two, god knows what day it was in what month anymore), some girl in Who Cares, Indiana got sent to the ER after weird behavior and complaining about being hungry no matter what or how much she ate. Said that a few days prior she’d had a weird run-in with a man on campus, said he had something to do with it, but she didn’t know who he was. Doctors did a lot of tests on her but didn’t find anything wrong, at least for a little while.

After that, everything went downhill.

_-_

_“Patrol the outskirts. Find any stragglers, see what they know-“_

_“And bring ‘em back here, yeah, yeah, I know the deal already.”_

 -

Turns out the girl had some weird mutation of a virus that practically turns you into a living, breathing asshole cannibal thing. And not only was she the first victim, but the guy who infected her- worked high up in a well-known pharmaceutical company. Apparently he went crazy and created mass amounts of the disease, and put it in everything, sent it all over the world to watch it glide into a tailspin.

By the time the feds found out who he was, he’d been decomposing for days.

It spread fast and out of control, and the worst part of it was is that you didn’t lose your sense of morals when you got infected- you still had the ability to think and act rationally. People meat became the only food with enough protein in it to keep up with the metabolic rate your body adapted to and required. The consequences of not eating it or trying to eat something else were less than satisfactory.

They were called the Scourged, and the world turned into a giant shag carpet full of pins and needles. Some of them wanted to be fixed, others wanted to stay that way- the crazy ones- hell, some clean people wanted to get infected.

It was hard getting the sick to cooperate when they just wanted to stay alive like the rest of the population.

 -

_“I’m hungry.”_

_“So who’s next?”_

 

One day he got wind that Eddie got himself infected, and for the first time, he was scared to know what he was planning.

_“Anyone who looks like they’re just miserable enough to not be missed. Now get out.”_

_“I’m all out of weapons, y’know.”_

 -

A lot of shit happened. Out of his rag tag team, only two of the members turned- one willingly, the other one more or less forced into it by the other’s emotional and mental manipulation. Eddie. He got sick and started amassing an army of sick.

After the outbreak happened, cities were quarantined from the inside out. Anywhere in the open was a dangerous game, and even then, being in a heavily populated area was risky business too.

It all fell apart eventually. Nobody had been prepared for it- because really, what do you do in that situation? The Scourged were able to infiltrate easily. They were agile and alert, way more than the clean folk. Looked like they’d been on round trips to hell and back, physically they were easily distinguishable; but they were faster, stronger, and they just wanted to live, to continue living; most didn’t actually kill unless they needed to. But when more and more people get sick every day, that’s more and more people that need to be fed. That’s more and more people that get attacked and killed. It was a madhouse.

When the bombs deployed, all bets were off. Everyone was on their own. He and the rest of the group set out to survive and find a cure.

 -

_“I’ve got new firebombs with your name on them, go do your job.”_

_“I’m getting there- I still got a few questions.”_

 -

The good thing is, they were able to make a cure.  
The debatably bad thing is, once it was distributed en masse, anyone who didn’t want the cure was shot and killed on the spot. Figured if you didn’t want to be cured, you were already mentally unstable and it was sort of like a weeding out the weak.

All of his friends who had been sick took the cure almost instantly, even Eddie- his appetite was just never the same.

 -

_“You wanna at least tell me who I’m out to torch? Can’t match a name to a face if I don’t know the name or face-”_

_A junky manila file is thrown at him, with all sorts of stamps and warnings decorating it that indicated it’s super top-secret government official stuff. He opens it with aplomb and sorts through, slowing down when he gets to the profile._

_“…The… Director of National Intelligence…?”_

_-_

The big man always was a little screwy. Well, they both were, but he never was one to hide it; Eddie- the brains behind the operation, also known as the guy who gives the orders- liked to trick people. In his defense, he was really fucking good at it, but Charlie- the guy who does the dirty work, y’know, the one currently on a manhunt- knows better because he’s been there since the beginning of it all. They were kids together, friends since at least six years old. And if you have to ask- yes, Eddie has always been that big.

 -

_“You’re kidding me, right?”_

_“I don’t do jokes.”_

_-_

The sour smell from the last chemical fire still hasn’t left the air when he gets to his moped, unlocking the seat container and jamming all the incendiaries into it that didn’t fit onto his belt. He’s whistling a merry tune and he can hear people off in the distance probably causing what they think is trouble, and he doesn’t stop himself from letting loose a giddy chuckle because they’ve never ever met trouble’s cousin. Real trouble is picky about who she lets see her, and it sure wouldn’t be some teenage punks with crowbars and Uzis they don’t know how to operate. He’s met trouble many times before. In fact, he’d consider her a very close friend.

 -

_“Okay so… I get that you want me to burn the Director of National Intelligence alive, but here are some problems- One, that guy could effortlessly kill my ass eight ways from Sunday with a goddamn napkin; and two… Isn’t he a good guy? What good would it do to kill the good guy?”_

_“One, just kill him before he kills you; and two, Easy. Once news gets out that the guy who was keeping the grand old ex-king hidden and safe is six feet under, then there’s nothing from stopping current overlord Ol’ Reliable from going on a wild goose chase for that pretty head on a silver platter.”_

_-_

Charlie pops a squat on the barely-stable moped, throwing up the kickstand and starting the thing up with a snap and a buzz. In a flash he’s down the road and heading south towards the city limits, easily weaving in and out of debris and fallen rubble. He passes a few groups of people, who all look at him as he putts by- he’s practically the only one in the entire city with a working means of transportation. A block or two down from them, that group of teenage wanna-be anarchists try to stop him with energetic displays of indestructibility in the form of waving their guns around and threats that don’t amount to much- he’s heard worse from his mother. They seem to want to cause trouble just to cause it, and all of his possessions are just a bonus. He sighs and thinks about it, pulling his goggles down over his eyes and his respirator up over his nose before reaching down to his belt- and in the blink of an eye, he’s unclipped a small bomb and thrown it their way and it explodes right on target, releasing a sweet cloud of tear gas.

The kids sputter and cough and a few are yelling, and he zooms by without them even being able to stop him. He’s moved from whistling into humming.

 -

_“Man, I’ll never understand your train of thought. This isn’t how I would go about getting our goals accomplished.”_

_“If we followed your orders, things would be ten times worse than they already are. You’re hardly fit to take care of a sack of potatoes let alone a dying country.”_

 -

A few miles down a small community has taken root in some ramshackle shelters, trying to live as normally as they can. It blurs by as he keeps riding, and he can swear with an almost sickening surety that out of the corner of his eye he can see a young woman with long, blonde curls let her gaze linger on him for just a bit too long.

**Author's Note:**

> man i hope i do something with this


End file.
